This is a record of my visits with artists in their studios. While I am there I do drawings of the studio and talk with the artist.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Fabienne Lasserre

Just before the cold swept across NY (in more ways than one), I visited sculptor Fabienne Lasserre's studio in Crown Heights. The air was still gentle for fall. The sun was shining sharply behind me, illuminating the white outline of a partially transparent orb that vibrated in the light. I sat snugly with the blanket Fabienne stretched across my lap and the freshly frothed coffee she had put by my side. Her two year old daughter, Lou, darted around the yard picking the last remnants of summer's tomato plants. Before starting we rearranged some of the sculptures to set the stage for the drawing. The garage door acted like a proscenium while Fabienne's animated, kaleidoscopic, and oversized ensemble came to life in front of me.

Fabienne takes abstraction to new levels by towering it magnificently over her viewers. As I walked through the sculptures that overflowed Fabienne's studio I could feel them gently guiding me through the space like the exaggerated hallways of a Fun House. I lavished in experiencing their expressive surfaces and wide cut out forms. They are wondrously animated in the spirit of Alexander Calder mobiles or Matisse's gouaches découpés. And then she takes her collages one step further by intuitively painting on either side of them. From neon oranges to glossy blacks to mute pinks, her palettes can go from monochromatic to vibrantly polychromatic. While I was there she was in the final stages of getting ready for her two person show with Annette Wehrhahn at Safe Gallery, which is up now until December 18th. Seeing the work in the context of the gallery a few weeks later only accentuated how much the sculptures play off of one another — cropping and framing each other to make entirely new compositions and conversations. They are truly all encompassing of both body and mind.

Image courtesy of Safe Gallery

We spoke about how much her work grew in size once Lou was born. My thought was maybe when your heart grows your art grows. Fabienne also just started working in Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. The space she was given at Sharpe has a view of the bridge. A wonderful way to make sculptures, I can imagine, looking at the Manhattan Bridge while you do it. I urge you to go and see her show at Safe Gallery, and to see more of her work go here:http://fabiennelasserre.com/.